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Assignment List - 5 -28 -08 Page 2 of 2 Following up on the assignment list and Wednesday night's meeting, I looked into the "case sale" issue. In short, there is no direct law or rule prohibiting a restaurant from delivering beer to a table in the case. Our ordinance requires "on- sale" to be by the glass, but as discussed below, this may not get to the real issue here, The effect of that in this context is to prevent any sort of "volume discount" on large beer orders, as you would get when buying a case of beer at an off -sale store (per -unit cost less than buying individual bottles), though the difference between the "pails" available at places like TGI Fridays and bringing out a box of beer for 15 -20 people is not much. l suspect that this is an area in which other rules, especially dram -shop liability and underage rules, make truly serving "by the case" in a restaurant so impractical that a direct rule isn't needed. Essentially, any bar /restaurant that had this as a regular practice would be uninsurable as soon as they're found out. Now, in the case of the Bangkok, there are some reasons why the "case sales," and some of the other statements the gentleman made on Wednesday night, might not be so absurd. I am generalizing from a set of Sheriff's reports we've dealt with on the prosecution side, but I think they're illustrative. It really does appear that customers arrive at the Bangkok (and other places serving the southeast Asian communities) in very large groups. Both groups involved in the fight we're prosecuting had 20 or more people in their dining parties that night. The witnesses' reports of prior fights between the "groups" (at other clubs /restaurants, most notably the Cancun) also described very large groups in the clubs each night. This particular incident may have been the source of the licensee's statements about the "jealousy" of his customers causing fights and disturbances; for this incident, he's more or less on the money. I don't know how many other incidents we're talking about, but for this one, I don't think the alcohol was strictly to blame. As it relates to "case sales," if a restaurant has a party of 20, who are all known to be of age by carding at the door, and they all want a beer, the beer could be carried to the table in the case without violating any laws or exposing the bar to dram shop liability. So long as a party of 20 is ordering 20 individual beers, and not getting some sort of volume discount, how those 20 beers get to the table is not covered by law or regulation, even our "by the glass" rule. There are still issues for the restaurant and its servers, like making sure that the beers are actually going to 20 people, not 2, but this is true whether the beer arrives in a box or on a servers tray. Having more servers and staff is supposed to be part of the applicant's security plan, and we would be well -served to question ho his servers guard against over - serving and serving minors. We would be within our rights, as part of a security plan, to require a different mode of beer delivery, just to avoid the impression that beer is sold "by the case" at the Bangkok. Ultimately, though, the larger issues seem (to me) to be the size of the groups coming to the Bangkok and whether the owner has the staff to handle the people, more so than the way in which beer is sold in the facility. So, reading this again today: No, there's no direct rule against case sales. In most cases, it's a terrible idea for the licensee. As I understand the Bangkok situation, it could really be a matter of practicality, but we should discourage it while guiding the development of the owner's security plan. Thanks, Trevor Trevor S. Oliver Attorney at Law Kelly & Lemmons, P.A. 651.224.3781 kellyandlemmons.com 12